Suchergebnisse

In 2012, the Australian Government announced the establishment of a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The aim of the Royal Commission is to understand how and why sexual abuse occurred within Australian institutions and to provide guidance as to how future abuse might be prevented. The Royal Commission commissioned a mixed methods study to explore what children need to be safe and to feel safe, to explore how they determine their level of safety, and their observations about how institutions act to prevent and respond to safety issues. This article reports on the findings from the first phase of the study that involved focus groups carried out with children aged 4–17 years from different types of institutions. The discussion focused particularly on how children conceptualise safety and how they make judgments about their levels of safety. Children and young people's conceptualisation of safety had multiple dimensions, which include the idea that being safe and feeling safe are two distinct, interrelated but sometimes non‐concurrent experiences; that safety is identified and experienced as a set of feelings; trusting relationships are the foundation of safety; familiarity helps children feel safe; and safe environments are those that are ordered and orderly.

Domestic violence is a significant issue experienced by many children that can have a detrimental impact on their health, development, and well-being. This article reports on the findings of a meta-synthesis that examined the nature and extent of qualitative studies conducted with children about their experience of domestic violence. Studies were identified by a search of electronic databases and included gray literature. Studies were included for review if they were published between 1996 and 2016, were from countries considered as comparable Western nations to Australia and available in the English language, and reported on qualitative studies that directly engaged with children under the age of 18 years on their experiences of intimate partner violence involving one or more of their parents/carers. Forty peer-reviewed publications that reported on 32 studies were included for the review. This study was unique in that it included child participation measures to assess the quality of available studies. This article explores the contribution that research with children has made to our understandings of, and responses to, domestic violence, and provides a critique of the limitations and gaps evident in the extant qualitative research with children on the issue of domestic violence. The article considers implications for future research, policy, and practice and in particular focuses our attention on the need to engage more children more fully in participatory research in the field of domestic violence. ; This project was funded by the Australian Government's Department of Social Services.

AbstractDomestic and family violence is a significant issue experienced by many children that can have severe detrimental impacts to their health, development, and well‐being. Despite the significance of this issue, it is only recently that children have been included in research that seeks to understand the impacts that domestic and family violence may have on their lives. This paper reports on the findings of a meta‐synthesis, which explored qualitative research about children's experiences of domestic and family violence. Thirty‐two studies, including from the United Kingdom, North America, and Australia were included for review. The meta‐synthesis found that children describe domestic violence as being a complex, isolating, and enduring experience that often results in disruption, losses, and challenges to their significant relationships. Children's common feelings of fear, worry, powerlessness, and sadness were also uncovered, in addition to the strategies they employed to try and facilitate the safety and emotional well‐being of themselves and their family. Children's wants and needs are also highlighted. The findings demonstrate that despite the increasing interest in children's experiences of domestic and family violence, qualitative research remains limited, with many gaps evident. Implications for research, policy, and practice are considered.

Children who accompany their parents or guardians during a period of homelessness make up 37% (more than one in three) of all people accessing the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP) services. This paper describes an Australian qualitative study that explored the experiences of children who accompanied their families during periods of homelessness. It focuses particularly on what children and young people say they want from the services that they come in contact with; particularly specialised homelessness services such as housing support services and refuges. Key themes that emerged from the research include: the need for services to engage with children as individuals in their own right, to listen to and acknowledge their stories, to have services that meet their individual needs, to act and respond when children feel unsafe and for workers who can provide support to children to talk to parents about what is going on. Children and young people wanted workers to know that they felt their parents were doing their best to keep them safe. They focused on what their parents could do and did do rather than what they were not able to provide. They called on the human service system to do the same.